UN warns of cracks in global immunisation system

GENEVA:

Global infant vaccination levels improved slightly last year, the UN said Wednesday, but warned that drastic funding cuts, conflicts and misinformation were deepening dangerous coverage gaps and allowing outbreaks to surge.

In 2025, 90 percent of infants globally, or nearly 116 million, received at least one dose of the vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP), while 85 percent completed the full three-dose series, according to data published by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF, the United Nations' health and children's agencies.

On the surface, those numbers look promising, with both indicators up one percentage point from 2024 and up four points since 2021.

But they remained one point below the levels in 2019 -- before the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc on global vaccination programmes.

This means "millions of vulnerable children are still being left unprotected due to conflict, displacement, and poverty", UNICEF chief Catherine Russell said in a statement.

"No child should suffer from a disease that a simple vaccine can prevent," she insisted.

According to the data, an estimated 13.5 million so-called zero-dose children did not receive a single shot in their first year during 2025.

That was 750,000 fewer than in 2024, and around one million fewer than in 2023.

The UN agencies warned that a growing number of children, mainly in poorer countries, start on the vaccine schedule but do not complete it.

Globally, the data showed that an estimated 7.3 million infants had received their first DTP dose in the first months of life, but did not go on to receive their first measles dose, usually given at between nine and 12 months.

While there can be many reasons for such dropouts, "we think that this is clearly related in some settings to false information, misinformation that is provided around measles vaccination", the WHO's vaccines director Kate O'Brien told reporters, adding that this was of "very significant concern". AFP